Nudging Your Habits: Small Changes, Big Results

Introduction

Ever wondered why we always start out with great intentions (e.g. "I will focus more", "I will eat healthier") and then by the next time we look back realize that we have thrown everything overboard?

One of the main reasons for this is the fact that it is freaking hard to build new habits. And since our brain is lazy we often opt for defaults, which are usually formed by our previous habits that we try to get rid of. In worst case these defaults might even actively work against us (in sense of "dark patterns" employed in many products). Nir Eyal's book "Hooked" provides a good overview of these concepts.

But not all hope is lost. Aimed with knowledge about defaults and a few other tricks, we can make adopting new habits a lot easier. Let's take a dive in.

A bit of theory

Why are our brains so susceptible to defaults in the first place? Well, at a very high abstraction layer our brain can be split into 2 modes: System 1 & System 2 (see "Thinking Fast & Slow" by Daniel Kahneman).

System 2 does all the hard stuff. Arithmetic, cognitive load and decision making. As you can guess this takes up a lot of energy (our brain in general consumes around 25% of the body's energy supply). Since our body is smart (and very efficient) it also has a System 1, so that our brain does not need to run in high-power mode all the time. System 1 is our unconscious decision maker, which is our brains go-to decision maker. Only when we raise awareness (i.e. active focus) on a decision/task System 2 will jump in to take the wheel.

So our overall goal when building new habits is to trigger activation of System 2 more often to do the conscious decision about the new habit. Doing that often enough will let that behavior slowly trickle down to muscle memory until System 1 will see it as new default.

What actually is "Beneficial"?

The other interesting question to ask is: What is beneficial? As this can be widely different from person to person. This gets especially interesting when you are not just trying to change your own habit but want to do it for a group (e.g. family) or might even want to build a product for a large range of people. I think there are two factors that go into this and both of them are entangled:

1. Personal Goals & Ambitions

2. Scientific Insights

The main driver that sets the direction we want to move are our personal goals. These can have a wide range, take for example the difference of "I want to be in perfect health" to "I want to live healthy without making major sacrifices to my current lifestyle". Both are valid goals, but they strongly change which strategies we might want to employ to reach them.

The second part that is dependent on this are scientific insights. By that I mean both information about what is theoretical possible (e.g. what is "perfect health") and (proven) interventions to move us towards our goals (e.g. exercise, supplements, etc.). Worth noting that proven here might also just mean you tested it on yourself and it worked (i.e. Sample Size of n=1).

Taking Action!

Now that we know what drives our behavior and how to set the goals, lets take a look at some strategies and tools to actually get down to business.

From my experience there are two core ways we can go about this:

1. Build awareness to activate System 2

2. Change the defaults that are available to System 1

Build Awareness

There are multiple ways to increase awareness. The easiest one is to make the tasks harder. This gives us more time to get conscious about the actions we are taking. Lets say you want to stop eating chocolate, so you put the chocolate way up on the cupboard, which requires you to get a chair to reach. This adds a bunch of extra steps for you to get conscious about your actions and activate System 2.

Once you are conscious another good strategy is the 10min rule (see "Indistractable" by Nir Eyal). Whenever you feel an urge, force yourself to wait 10 minutes. If you then still want it, you can do it, but in most cases the urge will have died down and you are already immersed in the next task.

Meditation is also a good way to build awareness in general, which allows you to reflect on your own behavior in the moment. But it takes a bit more effort and might not be for everyone.

Nudge Defaults

Changing your environment to nudge you towards the desired behavior is another great hack. This boils down to make the desired option as easy as possible so that it will be picked up by System 1 by default. If you already put an apple next to your computer this is an much easier option than go to the kitchen and get that chocolate from the cupboard.

Starting new habits with just 2minutes (see "Atomic Habits" from James Clear) is another way of making it easier. Starting with a much simpler variant of the habit you want to build (that only takes 2minutes) makes it a lot easier to squeeze into your day. Once you do it regularly you can start to expand on these 2 minutes. If you want to pick up meditation, start with just a 2min session that you can squeeze in while your coffee is running through. When you get a hang of it expand it to 5 or 10 minutes.

Habits are also regularly tracked through streaks. This can be a two-edged sword, as they can be a great motivator to keep it up, but also can feel pressured and more like work (and defeated once your streak breaks). It depends a bit on your approach (and competitiveness) if that is a tool you want to employ.

Conclusion

So, that was a lot of ground to cover. We looked at the underlying psychological principles for habit changes, how changes can be labeled beneficial and how to change our defaults. I find that understanding these underlying systems is not just helpful for me personally but also helps in humanistic product design to build products that actually are "beneficial" to users.

There are quite a few more things to talk about, that were outside the scope here, such as the power of identity (i.e. label yourself as "runner" to let others hold you accountable for running) or tools (like using a busy-light or the SelfControl app or even using timers on your smartwatch as habit reminder).

What's the next habit you want to redefine?

Do you have additional hacks for this?